Posted on March 13, 2009 in Personal Injury

The Baltimore Sun is reporting a man driving a Lexus crashed into the rear of a slow moving van this morning on Interstate 97 near Crownsville. The crash sparked a fire that consumed both vehicles. One person was killed.

The driver of the Lexus, Joseph Romano and his passenger were able to escape their vehicle. Only one of the occupants of the Chevrolet van was able to escape. The survivors were transported to Maryland Shock Trauma Center for treatment for not life-threatening injuries. Police have not disclosed the name of the person pronounced dead at the scene.

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 Posted on March 10, 2009 in Criminal Defense

As a Maryland criminal defense lawyer, I am often asked by parents whether they can be held financially responsible for the crimes of their children. The answer is YES. MAryland Juvenile Courts have the authority to order up to $10,000.00 in restitution to victims as part of any disposition. If the court finds, for example, that a person’s property was damaged, stolen or destroyed because of a minors delinquent act, the minor and the parents can be held on the hook for up to $10,000.00. This award may include other types of restitution such as the victim’s medical bills in an assault or battery case, or even funeral expenses.

For more information, please contact our criminal lawyers for a complimentary consultation.

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 Posted on March 10, 2009 in Criminal Defense

In Maryland Juvenile Court, in an effort to "soften" the blow to minors. Different terms are used to describe the process. In juvenile criminal court, a defendant is a "respondent". The Charging document is a "petition" not an "indictment". Juveniles do not get tried, rather they have an "adjudicatory hearing". If found guilty, the minor is not convicted of a crime but rather is "found delinquent".

If a child is found delinquent, the child is either supervised for a probation period, or committed (not incarcerated) to the department of Juvenile Services. Because the term incarceration is taboo in the juvenile system, the commitment is reviewed regularly by a judge.

For more information, or a free consultation, please contact the Maryland criminal lawyers of Silverman, Thompson, Slutkin & White, LLC. or call Steve Silverman at 410-385-2226.

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 Posted on March 10, 2009 in Criminal Defense

Maryland’s Juvenile Courts handle cases involving most minors-youths who are under age 18. The court has jurisdiction even if the youth turns 18 before the case is adjudicated, and jurisdiction continues until the age of 21. In some instances, cases can start in adult criminal court and wind up in juvenile court. Cases involving children 16 years old or older charged only with traffic violations that do not carry a possible penalty of incarceration are not heard in Juvenile Court. These cases are heard on the regular traffic docket in District Court. Cases involving children 14 or older who are charged with an offense that if committed by an adult is punishable by death or life imprisonment go directly to criminal court. These cases are heard on the regular Circuit Court docket.

Certain cases involving serious charges against children 16 and older, including murder, rape, kidnapping, armed robbery, carjacking, certain hangun violations and certain sexual offenses, also go to criminal court. Such cases can be transferred from criminal to Juvenile Court, and there are also provisions to allow certain juvenile cases to be transferred to criminal court.

Cases in Juvenile Court fall primarily within these categories:

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 Posted on March 10, 2009 in Criminal Defense

Maryland Criminal Attorney Brian Thompson successfully defends client charged with Possession with Intent to Distribute Cocaine. The issue in this case was whether or not the police can conduct a strip search on a person who is arrested for a traffic violation. In Maryland, the police have the discretion to arrest or to simply issue citations and release people who are charged with incarcerable traffic violation such as Driving Under the Influence or Impaired by Alcohol, Driving While Suspended, Driving Without Insurance, Hit and Run, etc., In most instances, so long as the person is able to be conclusively identified, the officer with cite and release
However, in cases where the police are unable to conclusively identify a person because the person does not have proper identification or in situations where the police want the excuse to search the person’s vehicle, they will arrest for these violations. My recent case falls into the latter category. Here are the facts:

My client was driving a vehicle in the Essex area of Baltimore County one afternoon this past summer. He drove by a police officer who knew him and believed him to have a suspended license. The officer confirmed this information through dispatch and pulled my client over. Suspecting that my client was "riding dirty" (was in possession of drugs) the officer placed him under arrest for the violation and conducted a search incident to the arrest of both my client’s person and the vehicle. This is all perfectly proper and legal for the police to do but did not result in the recovery of any contraband.

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 Posted on March 10, 2009 in Personal Injury

A skateboarder’s failure to yield when entering a highway contributed to his own demise and bars his widow and estate from recovering against the driver whose vehicle struck and killed him, the Court of Special Appeals has held. A recent article in the Maryland Daily Record discusses the Court’s determination that a skateboarder is a "vehicle" and therefore subject to the boulevard rule. Thousands of Marylanders are injured every year while riding on skateboards, bicycles and other recreational vehicles. An experienced accident attorney can help injured victims recover compensation for their injuries under the law.

Under Maryland law, a favored driver has the right of way under the boulevard rule. For years, the law was unclear as to what status skateboarders, cyclists and pedestrians held under this rule. This latest decision by the Court holds a skateboarder to a higher standard of care under the law with regards to the contributory negligence rule. An experienced Maryland Accident Attorney is well-versed in this law and can accurately and effectively advise injured victims on how best to proceed with their case. If you or someone you know is injured while riding on a skateboard, bicycle or any other type of recreational vehicle contact the personal injury experts.

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 Posted on March 06, 2009 in Medical Malpractice

Maryland has enacted significant limitations on the ability of Plaintiffs to use expert witnesses in Maryalnd medical malpractice cases. In 1976, the Maryland Health Claims Arbitration Act was enacted to help address a perceived medical malpractice insurance crisis. In 1986, the legislature further amended the Act to include a certificate of qualified expert requirement. As proposed in Senate Bill 559, an expert only would be qualified to sign a certificate if he or she did not receive 50 percent or more income from testimony and other activities related to personal injury claims. That language was amended to become the 20 Percent Rule; i.e., in order to qualify, a certifying expert cannot devote more than 20 percent of his or her professional activities to activities directly involving testimony in personal injury claims. The dichotomy that the General Assembly sought to reconcile was the desire, on the one hand, to exclude certain "professional witnesses" from the "pool of eligible experts" available to sign certificates of merit, while on the other, it did not want to "shrink" the size of that pool so as to "deny the parties the ability to pursue and defend these [malpractice] claims." This balance was achieved by the aforementioned language changes which "keyed the critical numerical measurement to time, instead of income," and narrowing the activities described as "related to" personal injury claims to the more circumscribed world of activities "directly involving testimony in personal injury claims."

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 Posted on March 06, 2009 in Medical Malpractice

When most people think of a medical malpractice case, they think about the kind of case in which the plaintiff (the party bringing the case) claims that a doctor of hosptial has acted below the standard of care and caused significnat injury in a patient. Another type of medcial malpractice case, however, inolves what is called "informed consent." In the seminal case of Sard v. Hardy, the Maryland Court of Appeals held that the doctrine of informed consent follows logically from the universally recognized rule that a physician treating a mentally competent adult under non-emergency circumstances, cannot properly undertake to perform surgery or administer other therapy without the prior consent of his patient. The fountainhead of the doctrine of informed consent is the patient’s right to exercise control of his own body. In order for the patient’s consent to be effective and "informed," it must have been one that is given after the patient received a fair and reasonable explanation of the contemplated treatment or procedure.

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 Posted on March 06, 2009 in Medical Malpractice

A deceased woman’s family has been awarded $2.5 million in a medical malpracice case against the woman’s doctor for misdiagnosis of cancer. According to the family, the woman’s doctor’s negligent actions resulted in delayed treatment and severely reduced her chances of survival.

In 2004, the woman, who then was 24 years old, went to her doctor after experiencing blood in her stool. Her doctor diagnosed the problem as hemorrhoids on several occasions, but the real problem was colon and rectal cancer. Because her doctor failed to timely an properly diagnose her cancer, the woman’s condition went untreated for seven more months. She eventually died in 2007 at age 27.

The family argued that she would have had a extremely high probability of survival – 97% – if the doctor had timely diagnosed her cancer, but that due to the delay in diagnosis her survival rate fell below 50%. A copy of an article regarding the case can be found here.

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 Posted on March 06, 2009 in Medical Malpractice

Many of my Maryland medical malpractice clients ask me whether there is any possibility that they can claim or recover punitive damages in their cases. The answer in every case is no. In Maryland, in order to recover puntive damages, the Maryland Court of Appeals (Maryland’s "Supreme Court") decided in the 1992 case of Owens-Illinois, Inc. v. Zenobia, that a person must prove that the defendant acted with "actual malice." Actual malice has been defined to mean intent to injury, ill will, or fraud. In a medical malpractice case, I have never seen a case where a physicain intended to injure a patient, or where there was ill will toward a patient that caused injury. Similarly, I have never seen a case of fraud in a medical malpractice case that injure a patient. While I suppose it could happen, it almost never does.

There are, however, times when punitive damages can be claimed in a medical malpractice case involving a defective product. In Zenobia, the Court of Appeals held that in order to prove a claim for punitive damages, a plaintiff must plead and then demonstrate: (1) that the defendant possessed actual knowledge of the product defect; and (2) that the defendant consciously and deliberately disregarded a foreseeable harm that might result from the defect. With respect to a product manufacturer, the Zenobia Court cited with approval academic commentary which stands for the proposition that manufacturer’s requisite level of knowledge "is usually gained through…testing procedures before the marketing or through post-marketing consumer accident reports and complains received by the defendant." Additionally, actual knowledge also includes the willful refusal to know. Therefore, a defendant cannot shut his eyes or plug his ears when he is presented with evidence of a defect and thereby avoid liability for punitive damages. Id. Simply put, "the test requires a bad faith decision by the defendant to market or distribute the product, knowing of the defect and danger, in conscious disregard of the threat to the safety of those who will be exposed to the product." While this is not an easy standard to meet, it can be met, and has been met in many cases, where evidence supports such a claim.

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